Chapter Text
Harry was sitting on the floor of his scarce bedroom, brooding over books, scribbling runes and ignoring the near constant remarks of one Merlin, Greatest Wizard of all Time, who was throwing a fit each time his strokes were curved too far to one side.
“No no, I already told you! It’s Wunjo, not Thurisaz! The stroke here is even, it doesn’t stick out at the top!” “What’s the difference anyway?”, Harry muttered. “What’s the difference?”, Merlin repeated incredulously, “Oh, the difference is only between never being able to leave the warded place or getting trapped in eternal laughter. Pick your poison.” Hedwig waddled over the parchments and sat right on his blotched rune. “See? Even the bird agrees with me.”
Hedwig hooted silently and tucked her beak under one wing, then closed her eyes. “Traitor”, Harry said, only to be aggressively ignored by Hedwig and passively judged by Merlin.
“You should be kinder to your owl, Harry”, a warm, friendly voice said. “I am!”, he protested and turned towards her mother, who was sitting on his bed, admiring Hedwig from afar. “She can’t even hear Merlin, so keep her out of your feud.” “Listen to your mother, Harry. She’s a smart woman”, Merlin winked suggestively and before Lily could protest the implications, Harry did it for her: “No, no, not happening. That’s my mum, Merlin, get a grip on yourself.” Merlin wiggled his eyebrows with a smirk and Lily laughed. Harry felt his cheeks heat. “Not like that! You know, it’s really appropriate to laugh at your son!”
“Oh no, it’s what every mother does”, another voice joined in and Harry whipped around to see his father leaning against his door with a smirk. He hadn’t even noticed him manifesting. Harry was glad to see him – as he always was - , but he was also in a foul mood. “You know she’s going to leave you for Merlin at this point?”
James laughed and Lily joined in. Merlin was just smirking, sitting on the floor and greatly amusing himself with the show. “She would never. She’s far too stubborn to change her mind now, I should know!” “That’s perhaps not the best example. I did change my mind about you”, Lily pointed out and James hummed. “Please, can we get back to what’s actually important? And that’s how your son is absolutely inept in drawing any kind of rune the way it’s supposed to be!”
Harry groaned and closed his eyes. He felt a headache coming. “I started learning runes only a few weeks ago, give me a break!” Merlin snorted. “’Give me a break’, he says. Did you know how long it took me to master runes?”, he stopped and Harry waited. “Well… a few years, now that I think about it, but I was certainly quicker on the uptake.” “Oh, were you now. I wonder how that could be, Mister greatest-wizard-of-all-time!”
“You know, I always thought people were exaggerating when they said that, but it’s starting to grow on me.” “Oh, for Merli – for god’s sake!”, Merlin smirked insuffurably. Harry had the urge to punch something. “Look, I think you two have some things to work out and besides, we should disappear before -” “BOY!”
Harry froze, as did everyone else in the room except one. Lily snarled and bolted at the door like a wild animal, standing directly in Vernon’s face when he threw the door open. “Who are you talking to?”, Vernon bellowed. Harry figured he must look kind of weird, standing in the middle of his room, yelling at the air, with an owl sleeping on dozens of rune-filled sheets.
“You listen to me, Vernon Dursley! I’ve watched long enough, how you’ve mistreated my son and if you could see or hear me at all, you would quake in your sorry-ass dirty socks you gave to him as a birthday gift! I will no longer…” “I guess we should be glad she hasn’t realized yet, that her magic can in fact affect the living world”, Merlin said, impressed. “She has a way with words though.” “… ‘ll be sorry you’ve ever uttered his name, which – oh yeah, you didn’t, since you call him ‘Boy’ all the time!”
“BOY!”, Vernon said, completely oblivious to the livid witch in the room. Harry had to suppress a smirk. “I heard you, uncle. I’ve talked to myself, obviously. And Hedwig, on occasion, but she’s asleep now. It’s far too early for her to be awake.”
Vernon threw a disgusted look at Hedwig. “Right. You will do no talking until the Masons left, you hear me? We allowed you to keep the bird and all this… stuff, but if you -” “If I what?”, Harry challenged him. “We went over this when I came back: There is nothing you can do to me anymore and I won’t do anything to you in return. As long as you leave me be. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll keep the conversations with myself to a minimum.”
It was obvious, that it went against Vernon’s entire being, but he grunted and gritted his teeth, then turned and closed the door right through Lily’s furious face all the while she yelled profanities at him.
“Lily, darling -”, James slowly walked up to her and hugged her loosely from behind, “He can’t hear you. And you’re probably giving Harry a headache.” “No, I’m pretty sure that’s Merlin’s fault”, Harry said miserably, glancing over to said menace, who was now lounging on his bed with a smirk. “Your folks are a case in and of themselves”, he said. “At least now I know it’s in the family.”
“Hey! Watch your words, Mister!”, Lily said loudly, “I’ve got a lot of rage to take out on someone and I’ve got no issue with it being you!” Luckily Merlin took the threat seriously and raised his hands in surrender.
“We’ll be going then”, James said with a tight grin. “We both need someone to scream at and you don’t deserve to hear it. Merlin does a little, but he needs to teach you runes. Call us whenever you need us”, he put his arm around Lily and together they dissipated. Harry watched it with a bittersweet feeling.
“Cheerful folks you’ve got there.” “Shut up, Merlin.”
<<>>
Harry had cleaned his room just in time; The dozens of parchments were stacked in a drawer, his books hidden under his bed. He had convinced Merlin to finally get off his bed, even though there technically was no need for it, but when Dobby appeared with a familiar Plop right on the duvet, he was glad to have done it. It was cruel, in a way, to see him in his old rag, with no crazy hats or colourful socks to match his personality and Harry’s heart clenched. Echoes of his shrill, tiny voice echoed in his mind and ghosts of his frail, lifeless body swirled around his hands.
As they stared at each other, Harry felt tears prickling in his eyes. Dobby, on the other hand, slipped off the bed and bowed so low the tip of his nose almost touched the floor. “Harry Potter! So long has Dobby wanted to meet you, Sir… Such an honour it is…” “Nice to meet you, Dobby”, Harry smiled at the wide-eyed look Dobby gave him, “What can I do for you?”
“Dobby has come to tell you, Sir… it is difficult, Sir… Dobby wonders where to begin…”, Harry waited patiently as he banned the horrid scenes from his mind. “Dobby has come to protect Harry Potter, to warn him, even if he does have to shut his ears in the oven door later… Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts.”
Harry took a deep breath and then motioned towards the bed. “Sit with me, Dobby.” There were still tears springing to Dobby’s eyes, but he didn’t wail like the last time. His request had been a little more open – more a demand than a request, to be exact.
“I appreciate your warning”, he said slowly, deliberately choosing his words. “But I will have to return to Hogwarts to prevent these bad things from happening, you understand? If I can’t do anything, Tom will kill several students and have the school closed. I don’t want that and I know you don’t want that either. So I need you to trust me, that I will handle Tom and his doings in the school. – And I know”, he said before Dobby could interject anything - , “that your Master holds a special interest in seeing Tom succeed, so I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble for trying to help me.”
Predictably, Dobby burst into tears and Harry hesitated for a moment, but then embraced him - slowly, in case he didn’t want that at the moment. But Dobby threw his arms around him in a rather tight embrace and sobbed into his shirt.
The elf swayed slightly, stars refelcted in his wide, shining eyes. Together, he and Harry looked down at the silver hilt of the knife protruding from the elf’s heaving chest. “Dobby, no, don’t die, don’t die -” The elf’s eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words. “Harry… Potter…” And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great glassy orbs, sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see.
<<>>
It was a relief to know (or at least be relatively certain) that Dobby wouldn’t be killing him by trying to safe his life this time. Instead, Harry thought about how he could keep Dobby out of all of this , so as to not get him killed this time, but there was only so much he could do while he was still enslaved to the Malfoys. He also wasn’t supposed to know about his predicament, so there was only so much he could do and even tell Dobby, but he had seemed impressed with what Harry knew and he had to believe for now, that Dobby would deem him competent enough to deal with the chamber on his own.
There was a definitive upturn to the way things went this time. Because even though not as spectacular as last time, Harry left Privet Drive not in a flying car, but by Mister Weasley, who had apparated here to pick him up after work. It had only cost him a few letters exchanged with the twins, because the Dursleys hadn’t dared to lock Hedwig up this time. A scare or two, courtesy of his mother dearest, had made sure of that.
His time at the Weasley’s was much more pleasant than the first time – mostly because Mrs. Weasley wasn’t breathing down their necks for violating the international statute of secrecy. It was bittersweet though, when he walked around the house and was confronted with so many memories, good and bad, that it felt like he was choking on them on occasion. Even the stupid clock was bringing tears to his eyes, when he saw all of the clock hands pointing towards ‘At Home’, except for Ron’s, which was on ‘Too Late’. Overslept, probably. Not held up in a fight to the death or a dangerous heist, but just too lazy to get his ass out of his bed in time for breakfast. It suited him. And Harry wished he would have had the chance to do more of that the first time around.
Since yesterday evening, Harry had lived his best life, surrounded by family and unburdened by the weight of the world. So of course it came to a screeching halt the moment Ron sat Scabbers down on the table during breakfast.
“Ron! No pets at the table!”, Mrs. Weasley chastised him. “Errol is allowed at the table!”, Ron protested. “Yeah, it’s no disgusting pets at the table”, Fred interjects with a smirk and Ron threw him a dirty look. While they were bickering, Harry had his eyes fixed on the snivelling rat sniffing around Ron’s plate, unable to look away as a feeling of dread pooled in his stomach.
Scabbers’ glance met his for a moment and Harry was ready to draw his wand and do the dirty rat in, but either Scabbers felt the danger he was in or he simply couldn’t stand looking at Harry for too long, because he quickly averted his gaze and gnawed at the end of Ron’s half-eaten sausage.
This was a pretty huge problem in and of itself. One he wasn’t yet sure how he was going to solve it, but the more pressing question right now was: How could he talk to the dead if he had to expect Pettigrew to lurk around each corner and in any hole in the wall, watching his every move?
<<>>
Harry was anxious and people were starting to notice. In an entire week spent at the Burrow, he had been in Ron’s room for the sole purpose of sleeping and nothing else. In the mornings he jumped out of bed at the first break of sunshine through the small window and hid in the bathroom until Percy came knocking at the door excessively. Then he took a stroll outside, said good morning to the gnomes and sat down in the front yard for a few moments of thinking. Mainly, about how he could be sure that Pettigrew wasn’t walking in on him talking to the echoes of his dead parents – who he had arranged to be murdered in the first place, by the way!
He took a deep breath and stroked his hand through his hair in an attempt to calm his nerves. Rational. He was here, back in time, and he was changing things. He had survived Voldemort a few weeks back. Again. And now he needed a plan to best him and his diary again before anyone got possessed or killed, ideally. Plus, The Great Merlin and Salazar Slytherin himself had forbidden him to kill the Basilisk before she could hurt anyone, so his only option right now was to wait until Lucius Malfoy slipped the diary to Ginny and then either somehow convince her to hand it to him or steal it from her.
Ginny was a whole other thing. He remembered being with her, the stolen moments on Hogwarts grounds, the peaceful seconds between fights and battles, how she had been the last thing on his minds before he had met green. She was mostly hiding, right now. Still the shy, little girl he had met years ago, and sometimes he thought he saw the woman she would become. When she was teasing her brothers or breaking into the shed and stealing a broom for a morning flight when she thought no one was watching. When she put extra butter on her morning toast and smiled sweetly at Mr. Weasley when she was asking for something. They were glimpses, glimmers of a person he had known, but deep inside he knew that if he played his cards right, she wouldn’t become that person again. She had been shaped by unspeakable horror, a first school year full of fear and angst, the terror of hurting anyone, not being in control of her own body – He knew he should and would do anything in his power to stop Tom from possessing her ever again, but he also knew that with that, the girl he had grown to love would be gone.
His skin itched with the need to talk to someone – anyone – who could understand. Who knew. But he was also terrified of the notion that Peter Pettigrew could listen in to that conversation with Harry being none the wiser. That kind of information would be invaluable to him or to any Deatheater he could run to. God knows there were still enough around at the moment. And so he had refrained from calling on anyone, even though he really, really wanted to. It wasn’t even like a few months back, when he had been obsessed with talking to his parents now that he was able to. He loved them, he really did, and he loved getting to know them. But at the moment it was less about talking to them and more about talking to someone who knew about his predicament and could help him figure out how to proceed from here.
It was frustrating, to just be sitting here and waiting for things to fall into place, but isn’t it what he had always done? He had always waited for other people – wiser people, more experienced and powerful people, to move the pieces for him and trap him in check, only for Harry himself to wiggle out at the last moment and continue the game down to the last piece. And he resented Dumbledore for using him like that, ‘raising him like a pig for slaughter’, in Snape’s words, but if he was being honest, there was nothing he had truly done about that. He had protested and bemoaned his situation, but had he ever done anything to change it? Had he looked Dumbledore in the eye and said “No, not like this”? No. He had sat there and watched while more powerful men than him pulled the strings.
No more of that. It was time he took the reins.